Minister of Labor Hubertus Heil (SPD) is currently hearing a lot of criticism from the unions for his draft law to reorganize mini-jobs.

They take a critical view of this form of employment overall and are therefore already fighting against the heart of the project – raising the mini-job upper limit from 450 to 520 euros per month.

But that is by no means the only conflict that Heil raises with his submission, which seems to primarily address employer wishes.

Because his draft law for "changes in the area of ​​marginal employment" also hides a drastic tightening of the working time documentation obligations for hundreds of thousands of companies - even those that do not employ any mini-jobbers at all.

Dietrich Creutzburg

Business correspondent in Berlin.

  • Follow I follow

The construction and finishing trades are in a mood of alarm after their experts have worked their way through the last few passages of the 31-page mini-job draft: it stipulates that employers in eleven sectors - including building cleaners, innkeepers and freight forwarders - will in future limit the daily working hours of their Always have to document employees immediately and digitally so that they are available for checks.

The start of work should be recorded "immediately upon commencement of work";

"End and duration of the daily working time on the day of the work", namely "electronically and tamper-proof", according to Heil's draft.

What this could mean in everyday life is summarized by the Federal Union of Building Associations in an analysis: It leads to "legally and technically unsolvable problems".

Nevertheless, "the lack of compliance should immediately lead to an administrative offense".

Companies are threatened with fines if the implementation is not successful by October.

In addition, millions of new mobile time recording devices would have to be purchased in the short term, plus software license fees.

The construction and finishing trades alone employ around 3.4 million people.

FDP: In need of explanation

The planned new regulations differ from the previous ones in two main ways: So far, companies have not necessarily had to digitally record the daily working hours of their employees;

and they have 7 days to prepare their documentation for possible inspections by customs and health and safety authorities.

The main problem from the point of view of the construction industry is that immediate recording is not at all suitable for activities that are carried out at frequently changing locations;

and all the more so as the employer should nevertheless continue to bear sole responsibility for the correctness of the records.

While the working hours of the employees working there can be easily documented in office buildings using stationary recording devices, a painting,

But the idea that employees simply record their working times using an app on their cell phone is also unrealistic, they warn: "For IT security and data protection reasons, the use of private devices is usually not possible or only possible to a limited extent and with a great deal of effort" , especially since these would have to be connected directly to the company network according to the planned specifications.

And it remains unclear whether the software must also offer interfaces for the control authorities.

Setting up all this reliably by October is “simply not feasible”.

But that's not all from the point of view of the building associations: According to case law, companies may only introduce "technical equipment that is suitable for performance monitoring" with the consent of the works council.

But what if the works council therefore rejects the mobile measuring devices?

In fact, the entire project appears "as pure patronage of the broad masses of medium-sized craft businesses through more instead of less bureaucracy".

Heil's move with the new working time regulations was politically unexpected anyway.

Because the higher mini-job limit is actually linked to the planned increase in the minimum wage to 12 euros per hour;

only in this connection did the FDP agree to support the latter.

As early as January, it caused irritation when Heil's minimum wage bill didn't say anything about mini-jobs at the time.

Then he submitted the mini-job bill separately - but combined with those working time regulations.

For the first time, this is causing dissonance in the hitherto harmonious traffic light coalition: In the coalition agreement it was also agreed to prevent violations of applicable labor law through “more effective legal enforcement”, FDP labor market expert Pascal Kober clarified on Monday.

And it was agreed to "simplify processes and rules" in order to give entrepreneurs more time for their actual tasks.

"The introduction of new documentation requirements would therefore require explanation," stated Kober.

Initially, it remained unclear to what extent the FDP would tie its approval of the higher minimum wage to a solution to these questions.